The invention relates generally to a continuous casting mold.
More particularly, the invention relates to a mold for the continuous casting of metal, especially for the continuous casting of steel into billets and blooms.
The as-yet unpublished Swiss patent application 03263/91 discloses a mold having a casting passage which, in a manner similar to a drawing operation, causes deformation of a continuously cast strand as the strand travels through the mold. A plurality of concavities are formed at the inlet end of the mold along the internal periphery of the same, and the mold has corresponding external protuberances. The depths of the concavities decrease in a direction towards the outlet end of the mold. The deformation of a strand is greater at the center of a concavity than at the two lateral edges thereof where, as a rule, there is little or no deformation. At locations of a concavity center which are remote from the inlet end of the mold so that the depth is greatly reduced, the strand lies snugly against the mold wall resulting in intensive cooling of the strand and a high wall temperature. In contrast, the wall temperature at the edges of the concavity is relatively low. Such a nonuniform wall temperature is not always desirable.
For tubular molds with external protuberances, the cooling jackets must also be provided with protuberances in order to produce gaps of uniform size between mold and cooling jacket. This represents a drawback since cooling jackets of this type are complex and expensive to manufacture.